Argh. Slight misstatement above. After removing grad students and separating NYU out by school, CCM actually took the top spot in number of undergrad alums on B’way in 2017 - my personal perspective is that placement on this list will vary and doesn’t really matter much… but I hate not being able to correct my post!
NYU Tisch - has more kids than any other BFA school out there - by a LOT. But they have plenty of success stories. If in fact, they have the 2nd highest number when you factor in MFA and other schools at NYU… that hardly seems like a bad thing…
Just throwing this out here (because I’m a proud Michigan mama) - this just came out the other day.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/theatredude498/top-10-musical-theatre-programs-based-on-alumni-2xs6c
For what it’s worth - they are all amazing programs and there is a reason why you see their names over and over again. Lots of amazing programs with great training!
It’s affirming to see your kid’s school on these lists, and no doubt that the ones who appear regularly are doing something very right (from acceptances to training to career prep). When families are creating a balanced list, these lists can be helpful to identify reach and super-reach schools.
Giving a little shout-out to CAP21 - they were the NYU MT studio up until 2009 until they parted for financial reasons (at the same time as the other externally run studio, Strasberg). Many of the “older” working NYU MT alums are CAP21 alums, so while not taking anything away from NYU, it does make sense to recognize that the “credit” is shared for folks who attended NYU/CAP21 before the split. After they parted ways, CAP21 continued to operate independently as a source of high caliber MT training run by excellent faculty, ultimately attaching itself to Molloy College in 2013. Molloy has invested heavily in the program, including a shiny new conservatory location in the Financial District (relocated from the old Chelsea location) and a wonderful regional theatre on Long Island, the Madison. Molloy just graduated its first CAP21 class in May 2018.
(So ends my history lesson)
An earlier chain on this topic was closed several years ago, apparently without replacement.
Here is the latest Playbill posting for top theater colleges based on number of performers in this season’s Broadway shows. It’s annual, and scheduled to be updated in September 2019.
http://www.playbill.com/article/big-10-the-10-most-represented-colleges-on-broadway-in-the-2018-2019-season
For triple threats interested in musical theater programs, note that Yale, Juilliard and Fordham do not have MT performance degree programs. Though based on different criteria, Backstage also maintains and updates a top-college list, specific to MT, at https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/musical-theater-college-programs-know-3220.
Based on years of watching these evaluative best-of lists (I recall an early Backstage effort on the best 10 MT colleges, half of which didn’t have an MT program), a quick way to tell if the MT list is smartly researched is to see if Baldwin Wallace and Elon are included. If not, you can discard it. Of course everyone will include UM, BoCo, CMU, CCM and the like, but those who haven’t done their homework tend to miss BW and Elon, perhaps given those school’s locations.
Playbill is based upon actual data - who is working on Broadway in any given year and where they went to school. It’s a small set of data but a good one for what it is and over time their lists have yielded some interesting info. I tend to discard most other “best” lists (like Onstage) as it seems like their primary purpose is to generate page views for blogs and websites.
@brendansdad add UNCSA to the list of schools that do not offer a specific MT degree, but does continually and consistently put kids on Broadway.
most recent list:
https://www.playbill.com/article/big-10-2019-the-10-most-represented-colleges-on-broadway?fbclid=IwAR38DtGCjMzMbEmFtuwW5xfnFBNx8Xav6zNQ0lsRhyn0-Mjaojo02NFzncA
While this list is great, I think it can be misleading in some ways. While this is certainly indicative that the listed schools provide great training, I am afraid the extension of that in some minds is if a school is not listed, the training is not as good, or the school is less than the listed school. Not true. You would expect an excellent school with a 40 year track record to show well on this list. While a school with equally great training that has only been in existence 10 years or less won’t have as many. I will use my own son’s school, Texas State, as an illustration. The program has only been around for 10 years under Kaitlin Hopkins and has only 6 graduating classes totaling probably >60 artists. Of those 60, in the last 2 years, 7 have been, or are in, Broadway shows. As another example, Elon is not listed although I think it is probably in the Top 10 when it comes to musical theatre training. So use this list as a confirmation that the school has excellent training, but don’t let it be an exclusive list.
Totally agree 110% with MTDadandProud
Yes all of the schools listed are amazing schools, there are a ton more that are providing equally amazing training.
I think it’s also indicative in the amount of students those programs graduate each year versus smaller graduating classes at other schools. Plus the accumulation of years and years of graduating classes versus newer schools.
“Top Ten” lists are published for everything from Sports to Cheesecake, they are meant to start a conversation, but not the end all be all.
I like the idea of quantifying the numbers - ie: which schools have the greatest number of recent grads/students on Broadway that last attended said school within the past 0-5 years. Or… make the results proportionate, and indicate with a fraction or percentage. Example - Big U graduated 100 MTs during past x amount of years, and 10 ended up on Broadway, therefore during x amount of years their “rate” of Broadway representation is 10%. Small U graduated 40 MTs during the same time and 5 ended up on Broadway, thus their rate of representation is 13%. They could also include a retention score - how many current actors finished their degree vs leaving college early to go pro. All pipedreams, I know. But valuable info nonetheless. On a separate note, smaller schools such as BW, Elon, Ithaca as well as newer/revamped programs like Texas State and Shenandoah are consistent movers and shakers in the MT world; I’d tend to trust a list that makes mention of those schools, too. We all know UMich, CCM and CMU are going to be on any list (and I’m not knocking them - they obviously are doing many things correctly), but IMHO, there are another 15-20 excellent schools that can easily rotate in/out of any solid Top 10 type list, and obviously more than that who provide good training and can set kids up for professional success!
Hey @beachymom - I did that kind of analysis on the 2017 list and it was very interesting but ultimately there were two problems - one, the data provided by Playbill cuts off at some point so some smaller programs get cut off and two, even with all the jobs data included the population size is too small to return statistically significant results. That might change a bit if I added in 2018 and 2019. I did learn some interesting stuff (like that 0-5 years post grad group is very small and you see more performers in 5-10) but I really wish I could get the whole database to improve accuracy. I have contemplated contacting Playbill to see if I could buy the data from them but then I felt like that would be taking theatre parent data geeking a little too far! 
@CaMom13 You and EmsDad are terrific at data analysis. I definitely think you should do further analysis and contact Playbill; also, I believe you can find a lot of data from prior and subsequent years available online.
@CaMom13 - well I would be geeking out right alongside you, analyzing your results. It would be fun to tier the categories: 0-5 years out, 5-7 years out, 7-10 years out, and 10+. How’s that for number-“feinding”? ha. I think MFA should be a separate category (or Yale could just have it’s own, I guess lol)
Totally! Yale and NYU both need the grad students broken out - and NYU gets even more difficult because you need to break Steinhardt from Tisch and probably the other Tisch Drama studios from NSB. For all schools the non-Drama majors need to be separately identified… can’t have those dance majors messing up the numbers! LOL. Maybe I won’t do it after all. Life is probably too short.
I’m really trying to encourage son to remember he will get in to the right school for him and that he will know it is the right school by factors like merit aid offers, connection to faculty and location. So hard to move their focus to the “less tangibles.”